2. Students

General IT and computing: advice and problems

Contact the Digital Services Helpdesk

• Email: it_helpdesk@aston.ac.uk
• Phone: +44 (0) 121 204 3445
• Opening times: see the latest
• Situated in: MB G216
• See also: Student IT Services pages

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LSS IT, Blackboard & assignment submission: face-to-face advice and help

Contact Lucy Drake

• Opening times: room is usually open 10:00 to 12:00 but see door sign if I are out and about.
• Situated in: NX04 10th floor, North Wing

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Blackboard, Turnitin & Aston Replay: advice and problems

Contact the TEL support team

• Email: telsupport@aston.ac.uk
• Phone: +44 (0) 121 204 4885
• Opening times: 09:00 to 17:00
• See also the Student TLC TEL pages
• See also this site for a Quick guide to submitting assignments and Help with assignments

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Assignment submission: advice and problems

The LSS Assessments team in LSS School Office

• Email: lss_assessment@aston.ac.uk
• Opening times: 09:00 to 16:30
• Situated in: The School Office, MB777
• See also: Your Assessment Handbook on the Submissions page in Blackboard.

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Submitting your assignments

All LSS assignments are submitted online via your Blackboard course.

Most assignments at Aston are submitted and marked using a system called Turnitin to check for plagiarism, enable marking and provide feedback.

A few assignments (e.g. group assignments or video assignments) use the Blackboard Assignment tool.

• A quick guide to submitting assignments using Turnitin (including a video)
• TLC Student support for Turnitin
• TLC Student support for Blackboard Assignments

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Accessing your modules on Blackboard

Blackboard is Aston’s online learning environment that provides you with access to the resources for each module you are studying. You will need your Aston username and password to logon.

• Log on to Blackboard
• TLC Student support for Blackboard

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LSS Student information

You will find the LSS Student information course in your My Courses list on Blackboard. In this area you will find:

• Student handbook
• Subject specific resources
• Plagiarism information
• Student representation
• Technology enhanced learning support

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Specialised LSS software

Some modules require you to use special translation or linguistic analysis software: see an overview of the software available on the PCs in the LSS Resources centre on floor 10 of the North Wing.

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Saving your work and keeping it backed up

Aston University provide you with a home drive (H:) that you can access from any PC lab on campus.

You must keep backup copies of your academic work in case you accidentally delete the file or (less common but more serious) your PC fails or is stolen.

• We recommend that you keep copies of your work online using either the Office 365 OneDrive storage that comes with your Aston email, or your own personal choice: for example a free Google Drive or DropBox account.

We do not recommend using USB drives for backup as they are too easy to lose and may corrupt files if you remove them while the file is still open.

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Email

You can access your Outlook Office365 email at http://outlook.com/owa/aston.ac.uk

• See also: IT Services webpages on email (including access from your phone)

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Printing

When you print using Uniprint you can log in to collect your prints from a Uniprint printer anywhere on campus. See this information on the Uniprint service, including the location of printers in LSS.

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Wi-Fi

The Aston University WiFi is called Aston Connect, you will need your Aston username and password to logon.

• See also: IT Services webpages on Wireless Networks.

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Free use of Microsoft Office and other software

As a student at Aston University you can use certain software free of charge including the Microsoft Office package – see the IT Services Software for home use page for details.

• Note that you can also install Office 365 apps on Apple and Android phones and tablets.
• See also How to access Office365 and OneDrive

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